From the Newspapers:
SOME CRITICS' COMMENTS "His large, three-dimensional, acrylic paintings are so assertive, powerful and authoritative that they make the small gallery feel almost claustrophobic." ELAINE HUJER THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR "his painted wall sculptures are riddles, the kind you can't pull yourself away from. ... with infectiously colorful markings ..." JEFF MAHONEY THE SPECTATOR "Idea pieces by Robert Yates . . . show a will to survive, a hardy, perrenial feistiness, maintaining that the role of the artist is as social (and environmental) critic. . . . thoughtful, and they do well in this company." GRACE INGLIS THE SPECTATOR "Many of these images are personal and moving --- Robert Clark Yates' painting, for instance. It is a kind of stylized aerial view of Red Hill Valley, with two footprints, the artist's and his young daughter's. It says everything." JEFF MAHONEY THE SPECTATOR "Robert Yates' wall sculptures, tall carvings and acrylic drawings embody an interest that runs more toward folk whittling than high-art sculpture, and therein lies both the promise and the problem of the work. ... Yates' work in twigs and beams could be read as a counterstatement to modern abstract sculpture, which has tended to be about the stack and the series, and about heavy-duty stuff such as steel. His pieces are, by contrast, decorative, lyrical and personal. They seem to be coming from a serious concern for the romantic, physical act of shaping and devising . . ." JOHN BENTLEY MAYS THE GLOBE AND MAIL "The artist has a keen intuition for the kind of colors and lyrical structures to which our senses are naturally attuned. Everything in the show is more or less abstract, but the shapes are so resonant and specific, they make you feel as though somehow you've seen them before." JEFF MAHONEY THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR "There is an intensity about all this work, some sense of mystery, a suggestion that the universe is likely not unfolding in any expected way." GRACE INGLIS THE SPECTATOR "The Red Hill Valley Exhibition, put on by the On The Edge artists- for-the-environment project ... (includes) Robert Yates' color explosions." JEFF MAHONEY THE SPECTATOR "Robert Yates has produced a 8' x 18' didactic painting that augurs the end of the Bay --- a romanesque admonition on sin." BRYCE KANBARA THE CENTRE "The vast painting by Robert Yates ... provided a vertical cross-section of Hamilton Harbour, from sky to the floor of the harbour, showing what happens when mankind has forgotten its place in the ecosystem." E.B. KENNEDY THE FLAMBOROUGH REVIEW "a powerful nightmare vision of the harbor as a place from which beauty has been banished. It has become a hell, both under the water and on shore, with factories stooping over the water like menacing, rabid demons." JEFF MAHONEY THE SPECTATOR "you look up and see a huge billboard of a fish, a mermaid skeleton and Band-Aids on the bay. You wonder, is it a new movie? The Little Toxic Mermaid? . . . you're actually looking at Robert Yates' artistic impression of Hamilton Bay." PAUL BENEDETTI THE SPECTATOR "A much gentler and contemplative sense of place, however, is found in some of Bob Yates' untitled drawings on washed blue-green paper. These drawings are based on trail signs which are markers of stones or found objects placed together to demarcate a path -- the drawings are accurate records of these signs removed from their original, natural, context. A trail sign constructed by one person to give direction to his followers has, of course, a practical function. As a place to stop and confirm one's bearings, however, it may also inspire a moment of illumination, reverie or even transformation. Yates presents these signs as icons of reflection and potential discovery." HEATHER A. FRASER from her essay "CONCERNING THE ECLIPSE OF THE SPIRITUAL" "So, if we simply look at Yates' work . . . what do we see? Unfortunately the answer is not very much." KATE TAYLOR THE SPECTATOR "Robert Clark Yates's paintings always look as though they have another painting inside them trying to get out. . . . a very physical art, robustly plastic . . . Not only is Yates' work joyous, uninhibited, and erotic, but it is glowing with ideas." JEFF MAHONEY THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR "I have seen just about everything . . . Yates is, without a doubt, the best artist in Canada." MAURICE HOWARD PAN MAGAZINE |
Details of larger paintings
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